Friday, November 01, 2013

Anna Silk Faces New Challenges as "Lost Girl" Begins Its Fourth Season

By Eric Kohanik

It's been a busy morning of pushing and
shoving for Lost Girl star Anna Silk.

Inside one of the buildings that once
housed the Lever Brothers factory near the Toronto waterfront, Silk,
who plays succubus/heroine Bo Dennis on the supernatural series, has
been locking horns on this late-September morning with guest star
Linda Hamilton, who returns as ruthless assassin Acacia in the 11th
episode of the upcoming season.

Lost Girl begins its fourth
season Nov. 10 on Showcase with the first of 13 new episodes.
Hamilton is part of a roster of guest stars that includes Kyle Schmid
(Copper, Blood Ties), George Takei (Star Trek), Mia
Kirshner (Defiance) and Ali Liebert (Bomb Girls).

When viewers last saw Bo, she had
mystically disappeared in one of several cliffhangers in last
season's finale. Bo's return will herald some big changes in the Fae
world.

“Bo is a key player in the Fae
world,” Silk says. “She doesn't even realize how key she is at
this point.”

The new season also brings big
challenges for Bo and those around her. But then, Bo has always had
to face big challenges.

“What's been so great about Bo from
the very beginning is that, no matter what, she has been a character
with so much room for growth,” Silk reflects during a break in
filming. “Because she started into this world brand new, she had
everything to learn and every skill to learn and develop. So, that
has been a real pleasure to play and a real gift.

“Our writers and creators come up
with great stuff every season to keep challenging her. But, man, she
never gets to rest! She always has to fight something.”

Exactly what Bo will fight is being
kept super-secret. “I'm under lock and key,” Silk confesses.
“Every season, I try to think of a handful of things I can say. And
usually I have a good handful. This season, I have, like, no handful.
And I've said this before in other interviews: The best way I can
describe it is that you have to take everything you know about Lost
Girl and turn it upside down, in every aspect of the show. With so
many cliffhangers at the end of last season, the way that people
might think it's going to go might not be the way it goes. Or it
might be.”

Silk has a much easier time talking
about changes that took place off screen between seasons, including
the birth of her son, Sam, in May. So, how is mommyhood?

“It's wonderful. It's really
wonderful. He's ridiculous,” Silk giggles as she shows a baby
picture on her smartphone. “He's really a dream baby, as I'm sure
every mother says about her baby. But he really is a pretty
easy-going babe. He's a happy boy.”

As for whether parenthood has affected
how she plays Bo, Silk isn't quite sure.

“I've always heard other actors say,
'Oh, being a parent changes how you perform.' And I think that's true
because it opens up your emotions,” she says. “It opens up your
heart in a broader sense. I feel I can't answer that question yet. I
feel I need more time before I can really answer how it's changed.
It's busier, for sure. And there's a lot more to balance, but it's
really great.”

Parenthood seems to be a good fit for
Silk, much in the way that Bo felt like a good fit to her right from
the start.

“It definitely fit right away because
I feel like, in my own life, I'm a bit of a late bloomer,” the
39-year-old New Brunswick native says. “And I've learned to kind of
be proud of that. But I feel like Bo was so new and I felt like I was
kind of new at taking on a leading role, and we kind of got to grow
together, so it has felt very organic right from the beginning.

“And I've definitely learned from
her. I'm way more tough in my own life now.”

The saga of Penthouse founder Bob
Guccione is one of the most colourful in publishing history. And it
came as a surprise to Canadian filmmaker Barry Avrich when he
discovered, after Guccione's death in 2010, that the story wasn't
being told.

“It was odd because I expected,
within the year, there would be all kinds of bio-pics announced,” Avrich recalls. “And there was nothing, because no one knew him.”

So, Avrich set out to tell the story. The resulting documentary, Filthy Gorgeous: The Bob Guccione Story, launched at the Toronto
International Film Festival in September, and Avrich was pleased with
the response. He admits the story is sad: Guccione died penniless in
a Texas hospital after a battle with throat cancer.

“It is a rise-and-fall [story],”
Avrich reflects over coffee at a downtown Toronto espresso house.
“It's tragic, [but] I don't know whether he would consider it
tragic. Because, if you live for 79 years, and 74 of them are damn
good, so be it. It was a great life.”

Born in Brooklyn and raised in New
Jersey, Guccione briefly considered becoming a priest before setting
off for Europe to be an artist. He eventually became famous for Penthouse, a men's magazine that began in England in the 1960s
before taking aim at Hugh Hefner's Playboy empire in the U.S.

The success of Penthouse led to
vast wealth and an opulent lifestyle that made Guccione, often decked
out in gold chains, a notorious icon of hedonism in the 1970s and
'80s. His success led to other ventures, ranging from movies
(Caligula) and magazines (including Omni and Viva)
to the development of nuclear-fusion energy and even a failed
hotel/casino project in Atlantic City.

Along the way, there were ironic turns,
ranging from Guccione's role as a righteous defender of the First
Amendment to his decision to publish photos that would cause the
first African-American Miss America, Vanessa Williams, to be stripped
of her crown.

Filthy Gorgeous doesn't hold back
in tracing the entire story in sometimes-stark detail. The
documentary begins by warning viewers that it is filled with nudity,
profanity “and some truth.”

The film is brimming with revealing
interviews, ranging from Guccione's family (including sons Nick and
Bob Jr.) to professional associates (including Alan Dershowitz and
Xaviera Hollander).

Particularly insightful are recollections of
Guccione's personal assistant, Jane Homlish, and Victoria Johnson,
who was 1978's Penthouse Pet of the Year and one of Guccione's
lovers.

“There were twists and turns for me,”
Avrich says. “When I decided to make the film, I didn't know
everything about him. I chose him because nothing had been done and I
was curious.”

That curiosity arose after Avrich was
invited to screen his 2005 documentary, The Last Mogul (about
Hollywood agent Lew Wasserman), at the Playboy Mansion.

“I was intrigued,” Avrich recalls.
“After so many years, why is the Hugh Hefner brand, the Playboy
brand, so powerful and the Penthouse brand is tattered and left in
ruins, like a Shakespearean tragedy? So, I started to do some
preliminary research. When Guccione died in 2010, that file moved to
the front for me.”

It soon became clear there was a lot to
the story. “He was a flawed genius, without a doubt,” Avrich
says. “We're all flawed; few of us are geniuses. And that made him,
for me as a filmmaker, really interesting.”

A native of Montreal, Avrich divides
his time between making movies and running an advertising agency in
Toronto. His credits include last year's Show Stopper: The
Theatrical Life of Garth Drabinsky and 2011's Unauthorized: The
Harvey Weinstein Project.

Fithy Gorgeous is a compelling
addition to that roster, particularly in light of how the story
ultimately ends.

“The man died without a penny,”
Avrich says. “Without a penny. Nothing to his name. Zero.

“In that 200-square-foot hospital
room in Plano, Texas, was this man with nothing but the name on the
door. It's sad.”